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What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

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Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#21

Post by marcinzm »

lrossi wrote: post #6

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest. This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, d…

>Not much real advice on the behavioral side, to the point that people often take trainings for behavioral interviews and memorize “leadership principles” and other nonsense.

This is what FAANG interview generally look for so why is it a surprise that potential hires focus on it? Amazon literally says that you need to highlight all the leadership principles in the stories you tell when answering behavioral questions. Granted, FAANG barely asks behavioral questions for senior engineers (and then it's like 90% project and bureaucracy management) much less junior engineers.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#22

Post by xyzelement »

lrossi wrote: post #6

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest. This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, d…

What you're saying is important for everyone to internalize. I'll spin it like this:

Your job satisfaction/pay are a function of your impact. Your impact is a function of your leverage.

If you're a "pure coder" who doesn't have any of the other skills you mentioned, your output is incredibly limited. At best, you produce a day's worth of code in a day, but you also require someone to manage you closely to make sure you code the right stuff.

The more of these other skills you have, the more you can (a) work independently (b) make others more productive and (c) make sure your team/business is doing the right things and (d) drive overall efficiency.

The more of these things you do, you become orders of magnitude more impactful than a pure coder.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#23

Post by yarinr »

mr-wendel wrote: post #16

Stuff I'd add that I think is crucial, and all related to one topic: good writing! 1. Learn to write specs Call it an RFC, call it a PRD, call it whatever. Writing out a plan for any project taking around a week or more is always worth it. Use it to establish scope and priorities. Keep a "Questions" section that you whittle away at as you seek out feedback. Make the body a hierarchy of design tasks and implementation…

Do you happen to know of a properly written (publicly available) spec? I'd love to see a good example.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#26

Post by motogpjimbo »

mistrial9 wrote: post #11
lrossi wrote: post #6

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest. This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, d…

professional interview sign seen at the "interview desk" for work placement at an expensive school for digital creatives: "sit up straight; look the interviewer in the eye; wear presentable clothing; answer the questions asked of you" .. I believe the sign was there because that was not occuring in many cases !

My experience from being on both sides of the desk has been that devteams are relatively tolerant of candidates exhibiting personality quirks during the interview process - it's the candidate's skills that are in demand, not their winning personality.

Maybe it's different when you interview at a FAANG company though? I imagine FAANG recruitment is a merciless sausage machine.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#27

Post by lumost »

lrossi wrote: post #6

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest. This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, d…

Generally speaking - your technical qualifications value over a replacement hit their peak sometime between 3 and 10 years into your career for most folks. Meaning while you may be particularly skilled, learning one more discipline, stack, technique, or language probably won't let you get a particular job done any better or faster than the next engineer.

Many engineers move to management at this point, which requires that you can mentor and grow a team of engineers, set goals, drive projects to completion, and manage your team through performance reviews.

Folks who stick to the technical path need to become an indispensable piece of technical glue across N teams, keeping them all building in the right direction and not crushing each other. This job requires deep technical knowledge but often doesn't involve a ton of coding e.g. Linus Torvalds.

If a junior engineer showed up with the behavioral qualifications of Torvalds and the technical skill of a junior engineer - they would still be a junior engineer and unable to build trust, guide a team effort, or other activities.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#29

Post by mathattack »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #19

This is very wise: "When I was at GM, you were a failure if your next move was not up—managing more people or taking on bigger, more complex projects. For many, this made for a miserable career path" As I've said before, I think this is a corrosive aspect of the perf/promo process at many FAANGs. The "level" system encourages/pushes people to "upgrade" in this manner, and I think contributes to a number of problems.…

Yes. The challenge is how to measure individual contributors. It’s easy in Sales, which is why salespeople can do very well without being managers. Harder with engineers, whose work is very interconnected.

Re: What I’ve Learned in 45 Years in the Software Industry

#30

Post by philk10 »

lrossi wrote: post #6

Something that I find interesting is that career advice coming from professionals having many years of experience focuses almost exclusively on the people aspects and not the technology: communication, trust, teamwork, documentation, clarity. The advice is clear, precise and honest. This is the opposite of what you get from new hires/juniors: they tend to focus on which stacks matter, what to learn, how to develop, d…

"No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem." - Jerry Weinberg
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